


Watershed

by KissedByNightshade



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Disguise, Fulcrum, Gen, Origin Story, Resistance, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 06:33:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13805481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissedByNightshade/pseuds/KissedByNightshade
Summary: Gilu knows only that she is made of dust, especially in the eyes of the Empire. But all of that will change as she involves herself with the mysterious Fulcrum and finds her place in the Rebellion.





	Watershed

**Author's Note:**

> This started as an inbox prompt that got way out of hand. Gilu is an NPC in my Star Wars: Age of Rebellion campaign. Ultimately, Cassian and Ahsoka are peripheral to her story, but I wanted to include them nonetheless. Gilu is a trans woman. 
> 
> Warnings: Childhood poverty and homelessness. Implied misgendering.

She is nobody. This is the only truth from her eleven years of existence that she’s never been able to disprove. All the others crumble as easily as ashes in the wind.

Arsyn once told her, while they were huddled under a torn cloak he’d found in a trash compactor, that they were inseparable, that they would always be drawn to each other. He’d told her once that the stars in the sky would bow down to meet her, that someday she would light up the night with pearls that match the green of her eyes. He’d always had a silver tongue, that Arsyn, and she’d believed him.

And then he was gone, whisked away by the same Stormtroopers who shoved her aside. And the sky never bowed before her, and the only pearls she held in her hand were raindrops, lapped swiftly from her palms, then from any bowl or cup she could get her hands on.

Without her only friend to share her fate with, Gilu learned new truths. The alleyways and awnings where she and Arsyn had huddled at nights became treacherous, passing Stormtroopers deigning to punish anyone so foolish as to sleep there after curfew. At age nine she learns to climb the drain pipes and fire escapes on warehouses. She stops looking up at the stars.

A childhood condemned to loneliness is a cruel fate for anyone. Gilu accepts it as best she can. She creeps along the alleyways as if invisible. She learns the hidden places of the city like the back of her hand, the places too small and too contemptible for the Empire to bother with. She filches meals from the corners of food carts, and she never stops moving.

Only the strong survive here, the weak left to perish. It’s the Mandalorian way. But Gilu intends to be stronger than strong. She wants to do more than just survive. She wants to _thrive_.

* * *

 

She first hears about the Resistance in whispers, hunched over a bowl of putrid stew swiped from a street vendor. One of the other kids, wearing no more than rags, shells her hand around a boy’s ear and says, “I couldn’t make it to the dead drop today. Maybe tomorrow; I heard something good. Something Fulcrum will want to know.”

Gilu stuffs away the word _Fulcrum_ in her mind and whispers it to herself that night, like a prayer, as she tries to fall asleep.

After that, Fulcrum seems to be everywhere. She hears it on the lips of a pair of passing merchants, speaking a language she doesn’t understand apart from that word. She catches a glimpse of a strange symbol on a bracelet around a woman’s wrist, then sees it again — spray-painted with temporary luminescent gel on the wall of an abandoned warehouse.

She had planned on sleeping on the roof that night, but instead she stays up, waiting. Watching. Wanting something to happen.

When it finally does, she watches a small group of humans wearing ragged hoods file into the warehouse. It is almost dawn. She smiles, her aching limbs and skinny frame, slipping into action. It’s but a simple matter to shimmy off the roof and wait just outside. She wants to know, needs to know what Fulcrum is. Who it is. What they’re going to do to stop the Empire, an entity she can’t even fully comprehend apart from its faceless evil and merciless control.

The door finally opens. She makes eye contact with the man who seems to be leading the group, and says — oil still smeared across her face from the day’s thievery — “Are you Fulcrum?”

She watches his eyes widen, then narrow. Before she can do anything, Gilu finds herself pulled into a headlock and over the threshold, back into the warehouse.

“Please!” she squeaks, writhing as only a street urchin knows how. “I want to help.”

“I’m sure ya do, kid,” growls a man, and she feels a lick of panic, as though surrounded by Loth wolves on the hunt. Like she’s about to be consumed.

But she isn’t.

* * *

 

The man doesn’t give her a name; neither do any of the other adults. She is given an address, written with graphite on a scrap of cloth. “Burn this once you know how to get there,” he says. She nods meekly, too stunned to say anything else.

The address turns out to be an abandoned apartment, located in the middle levels of the capitol. A mundane complex, filled with people pretending to be invisible. Like all street children, Gilu has to do very little to make herself indistinguishable from the oil smudges on the pavement.

The tasks start small. A distorted audio recording hidden in the bathroom tap tells her to retrieve a small package from a nearby starport, then return to the apartment with it. “Don’t come straight here, either,” says the voice, sounding like it’s been fed through the engines of a star destroyer. “Take the long way. Get some food first. Don’t let anyone follow you.”

Gilu, at age eleven, is quite accomplished at losing tails, thank you very much. She accomplishes her task, stows the small metal box (no longer than her hand) in a crawlspace under the bed, and receives the coordinates for her next rendezvous.

She falls into a pattern. She dead-drops data at the new site each week, occasionally receiving coordinates for different locations, occasionally being told to change her time of arrival. “You can’t afford to fall into a pattern,” the voice tells her. She tries to decipher whether it is the same voice and fails.

Delivery seems to be the mission she’s been assigned, at first, until suddenly it’s not. “Every night, two Stormtroopers guard the local starport,” her contact tells her. “Watch them from a distance. Record their shift changes. Don’t let them see you.”

It’s easy, oh so easy, to sneak past their attention. She’s nothing, after all. To the terrifying, white-clad troopers, she’s pavement.

She marks the times at which the guards switch out each night, then reports in. The Stormtroopers are unobservant and lazy. They aren’t expecting trouble.

She makes sure to be half a kilometer away the next few nights, but after that, the starport security increases tenfold.

She is paid in small parcels of food, large enough to keep her satisfied but too small to attract the attention, or envy, of the other kids. She analyzes every bite, scarfing the meals down hungrily while perched like a rook on rooftops. Are the offerings a mark of pity, or are they a form of payment to keep her from selling Fulcrum out to the Empire? Are they so small because of a lack of compassion, or because the resistance really is that desperate for resources?

She doesn’t know.

* * *

 

The scrawny child grows into a gangly teenager. More noticeable, but only in the way that the elite consider littered under-city streets to be unsightly but otherwise unremarkable, while their inhabitants are a nuisance at best, a threat at worst. She is still a nobody.

Becoming a teenager does have its benefits, though, and Gilu supplements the Fulcrum payments — now in the form of discrete caches of credits — with odd jobs around the city, usually messenger work. No one remembers her name for more than a week.

Really, she is the ideal candidate to work for Fulcrum. Her tasks are anonymous, dangerous and yet mundane enough for a quick and clever child to accomplish. They become more complex, more dangerous. She delves into the more elite parts of the city, even speaks to people who should be far beyond her pay grade. Always they are understanding, in spite of their attire, and always they present her with yet another item to dead-drop somewhere.

She is asked, at age 16, to attend a high society party, posing as the cousin of a politician whose name she does not recognize. “Your task is simple,” her contact tells her. She wonders, yet again, if these are prerecorded messages, or if there is some kind of device transmitting live. She supposes that either one of those poses its own risks. “You are to get one of our agents inside. He will carry out the mission. Can you accomplish this?”

For the first time in a while, a new spell of fear washes over her heart. This isn’t just a matter of moving datachips from one side of the city to the other. She will have to pose a convincing act of deceit, against Imperials and Imperial supporters. She thinks for a very long time, until the voice interrupts her train of thought and says, more gently, “You can decline, if you wish.”

“No,” Gilu says quickly, her voice crackling. She is afraid, but the icy fist in her heart has clenched. Fear won’t stop her. She has nothing, and she has nothing to lose. “I’ll do it. Just tell me what I need to do.”

Fulcrum doesn’t seem to have expected that answer. “You’ll need to go to the following address, this time next week…”

* * *

 

“You’re… not what I was expecting.” The dark-eyed, dark-haired young man who greets her could be ten years older or two years younger than her. The top of his head only comes up to her nose. “They said you’ve been working for Fulcrum for half a decade. More. I thought you might be…”

“Older?” she finishes. He has an accent, one that she doesn’t recognize. Off-worlder. She can tell her voice, deeper than he’d expected, throws him off too, but that’s okay. “You’re one to talk.”

“Listen,” he says. “We don’t have time for this.”

The meeting spot is an unexpected one as well; they’re standing at the maintenance door to a villa in the wealthier end of the city. Not too far away, two men are loading crates into a speeder.

They creep through the house, through the passageways that Gilu intrinsically knows are usually only occupied by servant droids. They encounter no one. Then he pushes out a ventilation opening to reveal a room with no doors.

“Take what you like,” he says. Already he is crossing the room. He puts his hand on a hold-out blaster and shoves it down the waistband of his pants.

There are more than weapons here. Gilu’s eyes trace over the shapes of elegant ball-gowns, over royal-looking cloaks of imported material. But most of all she sees a set of scarred, unaltered Mandalorian armor, helmet and all, on a stand.

When she crosses the room to trace the ancient cortosis weave, the boy scoffs, “That won’t do you much good where we’re going, you know. Hard to hide under these outfits.”

“I wasn’t gonna take it,” she says quickly, but she backs away, and instead selects a modest yet formidable dress of silk and gold pearls, one that will accommodate her lack of a chest. She catches a glimpse of herself in a mirror and pulls her hair back into a clumsy ponytail, held in the grip of an elaborate butterfly clip.

As an afterthought, she too grabs a hold-out blaster and straps it to her thigh, despite never having held a blaster before. Despite not knowing how to shoot one.

“What should I call you?” she asks as they walk toward the the exit. A speeder is waiting for them beyond the door — a fancy one, complete with a chaperon who flashes them a knowing grin as he climbs into the front seat.

He pauses, looks uncertain, then relents. “Call me Andor,” he decides. “And you?”

“I’m Gilu.”

* * *

 

The party is at a ballroom in the entertainment district. She can see the spotlights on the buildings for several blocks as they make their way toward the city center. She tugs at her clothing and stares at the invitation, repeating its cordial greeting over and over. In comparison to the diplomat in the glowing blue hologram, she feels woefully underdressed.

After they make it inside, ‘Andor’ slips off, so she distracts herself by passing through the crowd. Even dressed as a somebody, blending in is as simple as breathing.

She dedicates herself to gathering information. Eavesdropping, as it is called in polite society. “The local garrison pays pretty nicely for imports of datapad components, y’know,” says one man, a blue cape clashing with the pinkish stone of the floor. “You should try pitching that sensor of yours as well. They like their academy students to be literate with the latest tech. Officer track, and all.”

“Can you get me a meeting with the commander?” His companion scratches his mustache. Gilu makes brief eye contact with him, then moves off before she can hear anything else.

‘Andor’ catches her unexpectedly by the wrist after about twenty minutes, then pulls her onto the dance floor. Given their ages, their clashing heights, no one seems to mind that all they can do is mimic the movements of those around them. She takes his hand and feels how clammy it is.

He leans in. “Go get something from the buffet, then go outside,” he says. “Pretend to be waiting for a speeder. I’ll follow after a few minutes.”

She looks surprised, but complies. He joins her moments later, and they walk further down the lane before the chaperone’s speeder hisses alongside them.

“Is it done?” The man in the front seat looks less jovial now, and Andor looks deadly serious as he nods, and slides the hold-out blaster back into his pocket. Gilu hadn’t even noticed that he’d had it out.

* * *

 

They meet for a handful of other tasks like this. Gilu acts as a decoy, Andor carries out a task. She never knows what it is that he’s doing, when he goes off by himself. She has a sneaking suspicion that the blasters he totes along aren’t just a precaution, though.

She has a lot of sneaking suspicions, actually. She knows that Andor can’t be his real name, or at least not his full name. “Should I have a fake name?” she asks in passing after one of their tasks. “Or is that just for the somebodies?”

He looks surprised but not offended. “You can have a fake name,” he says. A non-answer, the only possible response to her non-question.

She thinks that’s the end of it. But she turns out to be wrong.

The hidden room in the villa isn’t deserted the next time Andor leads her down the tunnel. A human woman, draped in a luxurious turquoise robe, sits cross-legged on a stool, and nearby, a togruta woman browses a datapad with her fingertip. They both look at the teenagers as they enter the room; the former seems curious, the latter pleased.

“Gilu,” says the togruta. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

Gilu looks her over. Her attire is unremarkable, but her stance bears a glint of steel and stardust. Her orange and white montrals gleam under the overhead lamps.

“Are you Fulcrum?” Gilu asks, and she merely grins even more broadly, more toothily.

The human woman bears no mind to this exchange. “Gilu, we have a proposition for you.” Her voice lilts with an upper-class accent as she pulls out a stylus and taps her earlobe with it. “You see, we’ve been struggling lately. Fulrum here on Mandalore is dying.”

“Dying?”

“Dying,” confirms the togruta. “The Empire is cracking down. When they find someone opposing them, even in the smallest of ways, they don’t just detain them anymore. They make an example.”

Adrenaline floods her senses. “So, you’re leaving.”

The human woman tilts her head. “Yes, and no.”

“We’re changing tactics,” says Andor. He doesn’t look like an early teen right now; his bearing mimics the togruta woman, evaluating the circumstances. Preparing for the worst. “A crackdown like this means we can’t go on missions like the ones we’ve been on.”

Gilu looks between the two women. Back to the young teenager who has become her comrade. “What kinds of missions will we go on, then?”

The togruta woman makes eye contact for a solid half minute. Thinking. Evaluating. “For you, we have a few options,” she says. “We can get you off-world. We can start training you as a full member of Fulcrum, send you on to do good work elsewhere. Or, if you’d prefer, we’ll make sure you’re safe, and leave you be. No one should have to help us in order to earn freedom.”

“But you don’t want me to go,” Gilu says. “You have something else in mind for me.”

The human woman smiles. “We do. But only if you agree.”

“I agree.”

“It’ll be dangerous.”

“I don’t care. I’m ready.”

There’s another long moment of silence as the two women look at her, and each other, and Andor. She is seventeen, and still nobody — but she’s long since come to terms with who she is. She is Gilu. She is here to burn down the Empire.

“Very well,” says the human woman. “Here is what we want you to do.”

* * *

 

A year is a long and short time, spent preparing for the most dangerous task of her life. Gilu is given quarters in the human woman’s home, the villa with the hidden room. She is given clothing, more food than she could’ve ever imagine, a droid to care for her needs.

But most importantly, she is given an identity. “You’ll be my child,” says the woman. Lady Mora. “That will still stand if you decide you don’t want to go through with this, of course. But you’ll need my name, and my connections, to get in.”

A tutor droid teaches her to read, to manipulate numbers on a datapad, to slice into a computer console. She practices public speaking in front of the bathroom mirror, and then in front of her foster mother. She reads about influencing people. She learns how to apply layer after layer of foundation and eyeliner, then chops her hair short as the day of her examination draws near.

“If I’m to pull this off,” she tells the woman over dinner, “I’m going to need a male name.”

She hesitates. “Only if you’re sure,” the woman says. “Your comfort matters to me, you know. And there are ways to play off your gender identity, too.”

“I don’t want to jeopardize the mission,” she replies. And so, the next day, she receives a new set of credentials, masterfully crafted, with the name Jenor Mora.

On the day of the academy examination, she fastens her coat, thicker than all her street clothes combined, and meets her own eyes in the mirror. “My name is Jenor Mora,” she says, practicing the upper class accent of her foster mother. “My foster mother, the last heir to Clan Mora, adopted me after her late husband’s death out of the goodness of her heart.” Then she smiles. “And I’m here for the officer track examination.”

* * *

 

Four years later, when she leaves the Imperial Academy on Mandalore for the final time, she is no longer nobody. The shuttle carries her toward the stars, toward the waiting star destroyer.

She fastens her new rank insignia on the front of a dull grey uniform, then adjusts the cap on her short brown hair in the mirror. Eye contact with her own reflection gives nothing away, nothing except for the spark of vitality that only she can recognize.

Her name is Gilu Mora. Rebel spy. And she is going to tear the Empire apart piece by bloody piece.


End file.
